Today was the day the chickens we purchased a couple few months back were butchered. We did 18 of them in about three hours with the three of us. Myself, the manthing and our partner in homesteading crimes got busy and while the job aint never much fun, it went very smoothly with the exception of a couple that went rolling on down the hill. This was the first time we have ever left the bird whole and not cut them down which is fine with me as it makes things much easier and quicker. We always skin rather than pluck so that also cuts the time down some. All in all for a job I don't like this was a great butcher day. If all butchering days went like today did I probably wouldn't mind doing it more often.
I am including a couple links to sites that I find helpful and that I know do a good job on tutorials for those that have never butchered chickens before. In this first link is Frugal and although they use a cone to kill and also use a plucker
the tutorial is very good. The second link is from
Backwoods Home and is more like how we do our birds here at butchering time. A third good tutorial is from
the modern homestead .
cool! we used to hire a guy to do it for about $1.25 a bird. Then we'd cool them for a couple of hours and cut them the way we wanted. We did 50 in one day, so we'd be good to go until the next year.
ReplyDeleteI'm not looking forward to doing mine myself, but it's gotta be done. Just part of living on a homestead.
yup it sure is just part of the homestead at least iffin ya wanna eat meat HP..As a kid we would offat least that many in a day, well i didnt do much but i remember the gathering of folks come butcher day and the stench of plucking feathers.... ewwwwwwwwwwwww
ReplyDeleteI would think doing 50 in one day would totally be the way to go, get it all done in what crazy butchering day. Otherwise it'd seem like a lot of set up and clean up work just to process a handful of birds. Of course, having 50 chickens ready to go at once probably comes with its own issues - no?
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SHTFblog.com
I personally would not want to do more than 30 or so in a days time. My hands just cant do that many these days. We do not have the space for raising 50 birds either and yes to do that many it would be best to have a place to capture and hold all the birds before the butcher so that you dont have to chase them all down on the actual day. Then again as with anything the more help you have the easier it is to accomplish large quantities
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